1) Effective Date: 20th December 2007
2) Last Revised: 13th May 2009

This privacy policy applies to all members of the MySurvey panel. The MySurvey panel is being organized by TNS. By TNS we mean TNS EAP B.V., a Dutch private company with limited liability, having its office at Grote Bickersstraat 74, 1013KS Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

By applying to become a member of the MySurvey panel, you consent to TNS holding, storing, processing and using the information you submit as set out in this privacy policy.

1. TNS's Privacy Pledge
2. How Information Is Used
3. Updating Your Personal Information
4. Opt Out Policy
5. Notification of Changes
6. Use of Cookies
7. Surveys for children
8. Contact
9. Jurisdiction

1. TNS's Privacy Pledge

When you participate with us your privacy is assured.

1. We will never try to sell you anything - that is not our business. We will never sell your name to anyone else who might want to sell you anything.
2. We unequivocally promise to hold details of your participation in strictest confidence.
3. Occasionally, we may contact you to validate responses. We will never misrepresent ourselves or what we are doing.
4. Your individual responses to surveys will also be kept confidential and will be used only when grouped with other responses.
5. Your decisions about participating in a study, responding to specific questions, or discontinuing participation will be respected without question.

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2. How Information Is Used

The Information We Collect & How We Use It

When you register as an interactive panel member, we collect the following personal identifying information: your name, postal address, email address, phone number and other contact details. We use this information to let you know about opportunities to take surveys, to provide new updates that may be of interest to our panelists, to inform you about special initiatives and benefits we are offering to our members.

We also send a brief quarterly email to our members to provide information of interest and to express our appreciation for their participation. We use postal addresses to mail free gifts offered to panel members, or products to test and sometimes we send paper questionnaires for our interactive panel members to fill in.
We use phone numbers calling panel members in response to their request for a return call to answer a question or address any concerns. Very occasionally, we call panelists to validate survey responses. We will not contact you to take part in telephone surveys without asking your permission.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. Panel member names, addresses, and phone numbers are maintained on a database accessible only by TNS research staff.

TNS frequently asks panel members for demographic information (such as age, gender, and household composition), computer and web access capabilities, and lifestyle information (for example, types of vehicles owned or business/recreational travel) and other information. TNS uses this information to select surveys that are appropriate for the panel members. For example, a survey related to satisfaction with stays at various hotel chains might be sent only to those panelists who indicate a certain frequency of travel.

TNS asks panel members for their opinions about a variety of products and services by asking them to complete surveys via e-mail or at a website. TNS combines the individual panelist responses and reports on the aggregated (or group) results.

Individual responses are never released or published. Your Personal identifying information is not provided to our clients or other third parties outside TNS without your prior consent thereto. Under certain exceptional circumstances, TNS may have a legal duty or right to disclose personal information without the individual's knowledge or consent. An example of such disclosure would include subpoenas and other court or government orders.

In the event TNS EAP or its affiliates experience a merger, acquisition, sale or other transaction pursuant to which this website is acquired by a third party or an affiliate of TNS EAP, TNS EAP may disclose your personal information to the third party or affiliate both before and after the transaction, for the sole purpose of facilitating and effecting that transaction. In the event a transaction is consummated, you will be notified of the transaction via e-mail and/or through a notice on our website, and TNS EAP's custody of your personal information will be transferred subject to all the terms and restrictions in this privacy policy. In the event the transaction is not consummated, TNS EAP will require the third party or affiliate not to use or disclose your personal information in any manner whatsoever and to completely erase the same.

For surveys offered at the panelist website, panel members are asked to log in by means of a username and password.

TNS may occasionally supplement information obtained from panel members with information obtained from a third party (such as demographic or ownership information that TNS doesn't typically collect, e.g. small dog ownership). TNS may also use third party database applications to provide services to our members (such as customer support or communications to members). In such cases, we ensure your privacy by having these third parties sign a written, legally binding agreement stipulating that they will not share TNS data with any outside party and that any individual identifying information is to be used solely for the purpose of matching records or providing the agreed upon database service.

TNS may also exchange information with our partner sites for the member's benefit and with the member's knowledge (in accordance with this privacy policy). These benefits include opportunities to earn additional rewards on the partner site and/or to eliminate TNS advertising to those who are already TNS panel members. The information exchanged will be the member ID and/or email address (the minimum information needed to provide the benefit). We ensure your privacy by having our partner sites sign a written, legally binding agreement stipulating they will not share your individual identifying information and that it is to be used solely for the purpose of providing you with additional rewards and to eliminate redundant advertising.

All information you provide to us, may be passed or made available to WPP affiliates, or to third parties that will process some of your data on behalf of WPP (‘data processors). Some of these affiliates or data processors are based in countries that do not have data protection laws, comparable to those of EU-member countries. All WPP affiliates and data processors are required to comply with this privacy policy and your personal data will only be used for the purpose(s)s for which it was submitted as set out in this privacy policy. Please note that by sending your personal information to us you are explicitly consenting to the cross-border transfer of your information. A full list of WPP affiliates can be found at http://www.wpp.com/wpp/companies/company-list.htm. You can refer to the About Us section of this web site to learn more about WPP.

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3. Updating Your Personal Information

Policies on Correcting/Updating Personal Information

TNS relies on panel members themselves to provide any updates to personal identifying information. Members may update email addresses, password, mailing address, phone number as well as name of the person who initially registered by going to the Update Your Info section of this website (available to members only).

For changes to any other personal information, including user name, panel members are asked to contact TNS via web form or by e-mail. Members may also update their email addresses or other information by web form, emailing, or by mailing in their changes, whatever they prefer. (Please note that changes sent via the postal service will take longer to implement due to time needed for mail delivery.)

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4. Opt Out Policy

Your Decision Not to Participate

Panel members may decline to respond to a survey or opt to drop interactive panel membership at any time. We respect the decision to decline participation and will not try to dissuade you. Panelists who prefer not to complete a given survey need not do so.

Panelists who would like to withdraw their membership from the interactive panel may do so at any time by contacting TNS via email, web form or by sending us a postcard with your name, e-mail address and postal address with a request to be removed. Panelists may also withdraw membership by clicking on the unsubscribe link found on the Contact page in the member area of the TNS EAP web site and on the bottom of every email that members receive from TNS EAP.

When you decide to withdraw your membership from the interactive panel, TNS may ask you to complete a brief survey about the reason(s) for discontinuing membership. This survey is optional and does not involve any additional email; any results will help us improve panel members' experience. Thereafter, TNS  will stop sending survey notifications. However, the panel member will continue to be entered into any running sweepstakes drawing for the contest period in which participation was suspended unless the panelist requests otherwise. Following the sweepstakes drawing and any relevant winner notification, no further contact will occur.

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5. Notification of Changes

How We Notify You About Changes to Our Privacy Policy

If we are going to use your personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated in our privacy policy at the time of collection, we will notify you via email. You will have a choice as to whether or not we use your information in this different manner; instructions for how to make that choice will be included in the email. If we make any material changes to our privacy practices that do not affect user information already stored in our database, we will post a prominent notice on our website notifying our members that there is a change and pointing them to the revised privacy page.

Occasionally, we conduct studies with partner companies on the partner's website, which may operate under a different privacy policy. Like all our other studies, participation in these studies is completely voluntary and informed. We notify select members via email about these research opportunities and provide a complete description of what is involved and any member benefits.

On occasion, we invite members to take this type of survey without email notification (that is, the survey is waiting when they visit the site or they are invited to take a second survey at the conclusion of participation of another survey). In all these cases, we will explicitly state if some or all of the survey will be conducted at the partner site and if so, what privacy policy is in operation for the study (this privacy policy or a different policy).

As necessary, we will provide a link to the partner's privacy policy or to the policy pertaining to the particular study. This information will be put in the email notification for those surveys that have an email notification. For surveys where there is no email notification, the information will be included in the survey introduction. Members may decline to participate in these studies or drop out of the study at any time. When survey notification is via email, they can simply not click on the link to the survey.

If the information is contained in the survey introduction, an easy way will be provided for the user to exit the survey (for example, a button on the survey intro page with "prefer not to participate"; a click exits them from the survey and places them on the last page they visited).

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6. Use of Cookies

How We Use Cookies on Our Website

TNS uses cookies on our registration and survey forms during the time you are actively completing the forms. These cookies are used for technical purposes to allow for accurate transmission of survey information to our database and to ensure that a member does not take the same survey more than once. For longer surveys, we use cookies to make form completion more convenient for the panelist.

They allow for completion of the form in more than one sitting; you take up where you left off rather than starting from the beginning again. TNS also uses cookies on the member area of the site to store user name automatically and password (optionally) so that the user does not have to repeatedly retype the information. For users' convenience, this cookie is stored for subsequent sessions.

Member area cookies are also used to identify valid members in order to protect access to their specific member information (such as rewards account information) and to personalize their experience on the site. The web server also creates cookies to uniquely identify each user session when a member visits the site. This latter cookie is automatically deleted at the end of a session.

No personal identifying information is stored on any cookie nor do we retain any cookied information on our databases. Because cookies are used to identify valid members to protect access to their specific member information and to personalize their member experience, users who choose not to allow cookies cannot register nor can they access the member area of our website with its associated member benefits (such as taking surveys, earning reward points and redeeming rewards).

TNS also uses cookies for advertising research purposes (“AdTracker”) by keeping track of the types of online advertisements that you see on the websites that you visit, as well as the number of times that you see those ads.

The Cookie incorporates a key which can identify clear GIFs that are transparent single-pixel graphic images used in combination with cookies to help people running websites better understand the behavior of their customers. Clear GIFs can be placed on websites and in HTML emails.

TNS AdTracker does not track if you click on that advertisement, only if it was served to you. When you are served with an advertisement including the clear GIFs, the cookie key will send TNS an update confirming that you have interacted with this advertisement. We use this information for the sole purpose of counting the number of panel members that viewed the ads and better understand the relevance of the ads based on follow-up surveys and analyzing our panel members’ demographic characteristics.

We ensure that clear GIFs are not included in any advertisements which could provide information which amounts to sensitive personal data, for example information about your religious beliefs, your sexual life, your health, your political opinions, your racial or ethnic origin.

Only information collected by Cookies as specified in this section of our privacy policy is automatically collected from MySurvey Panel Members. In the event that we do collect any personal data about visitors to the Site it is available only to TNS. The Cookie is only sent to the computers of members of our on-line research panels. It is not sent if panel members do not provide consent by means of an opt out.

If you do not want to receive the Cookie, please visit your Update my profile section of your personal page and uncheck the MySurvey AdTracker box.

Via your internet browser, you can also delete the cookies that have already been transferred to your computer, as well as blocking cookies to be downloaded to your computer.

As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files.  This information includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and click-stream data.

We use this information, to analyze trends, to administer the site, to track users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole.  To protect against fraud, we may link this automatically-collected data to information submitted on our website.

Occasionally, we employ technology to provide security of images displayed in our surveys.  A script embedded in certain pages displaying images overwrites information located on your computer’s clipboard when you are on that page.  The script is used very infrequently and only for certain images that are presented.  Please be assured that any information you may have copied to your clipboard is not captured or read; rather, it is overwritten with blank data.  We advise you to paste any information that you have cut or copied to your clipboard before you log in to take a survey.



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7. Surveys for children

From time to time, TNS may run surveys for children. TNS is committed to protecting the online privacy of children and considers a child to be anyone under the age of 16.

Where children are invited to participate in surveys, TNS will ask the parent/guardian's prior consent thereto. TNS will not request any personal information about the child other than that provided by the parent/ guardian or by the child's survey responses.

A parent/ guardian may review, request the deletion of or prohibit the future collection of their child's personal information at any time. This can be done by emailing Emma Morrison , filling in the web form available in the members’ area of this Website or by sending us a postcard with your name, e-mail address and postal address.

TNS EAP encourages parents and guardians to monitor their children's use of the internet. While the child is completing the survey, it is the responsibility of the parent or guardian to supervise them.
TNS EAP will not knowingly contact a child directly to participate in any survey or promotion.

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8. Contact

If you have any questions or concerns relating to privacy, you can contact TNS EAP by emailing Emma Morrison
or writing to TNS EAP B.V., Postbus 247 1000 AE Amsterdam, Nederland .

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9. Jurisdiction

This Privacy Policy constitutes the entire agreement between you and TNS EAP regarding privacy and data protection.

This Privacy Policy shall be governed by and construed in accordance with Dutch law. All disputes with regard to or arising in connection with this privacy policy shall solely be submitted to the competent judge in the Court District of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.